Today I posted another article on my worlditcnet.org website template for ITC groups. If you’re interested you can read the article below, or go directly to the page at worlditcnet.

Conflict Resolution

How do we humans deal with the conflicts that spin out of human relationships? How do we maintain peace and order?

Well, down through the ages there’s been a man’s way and a woman’s way and a spiritual seeker’s way.

Men like to make rules of good behavior and then punish and maybe isolate those who break the rules.

Women like to talk and share feelings and empathize with each other… and then reach an understanding.

Spiritual seekers like to detach from the trappings of human relationships and to explore finer, other-worldly relationships through one’s higher self rather than through the carnal body-mind with its five senses.

Most of the diverse peace-keeping tools and techniques used by the many countries, religions, and communities in today’s world seem to have spun out of those first two basic human qualities… the man’s way and the woman’s way… and we’ll explore that in a moment, along with the spiritual seeker’s way.

But first let’s look at some possibilities and pitfalls for ITC groups as they try to keep the peace and deal with conflicts among their members.

PitfallsMen’s way. One extreme approach to peacekeeping in an ITC group would be to devise a detailed, thorough constitution full of rules on how to conduct ITC sessions, how to interact with the media, and how to behave with other members… all with the aim of sustaining resonance within the group. Members who habitually break the rules are first reminded, then warned, then moved to provisional status. This male approach would be tedious, punitive, and full of loopholes (kind of like litigation and Sharia, described below).

Women’s way. Another extreme approach would be to urge everyone to be in frequent communication with each other through chat rooms and videoconferences, talking through issues, plans, and projects… venting everyone’s feelings and listening with genuine empathy… and reaching some sort of general agreement. This female approach would be time-consuming, energy-intensive, and generally exhausting… like doing a lot of conciliation and mediation on a continual basis.

Spiritual seeker’s way. A third extreme approach would involve all members meditating and praying and doing other inner work in the course of ITC research, with minimal interaction among members. This spiritual approach tries to ignore the fact that an ITC group is a worldly institution held together by conscious, interacting human beings.

Possibilities
So let’s look at better possibilities for minimizing and resolving conflicts within an ITC group, which will involve finding some kind of middle ground between the man’s way, the woman’s way, and the spiritual seeker’s way… that employs the best of all three realities.

Instead of relying only on rules or on empathetic dialog or on inner work, an ITC group could have…

a detailed mission statement that clearly spells out the basic values and goals of the group… the structure and function of the group as a worldly institution… and this mission statement would be used instead of a complex set of laws and rules… and

a comprehensive spirit world model or cosmology that explains in some detail the spirit worlds and spirit communities, especially those inhabited by our transpartners.

By the time a member becomes an operative (having gone through the 3-month-or-longer period of basic training as a provisional in the private workspace), he or she should have 1) learned those inner-work skills, 2) become familiar with talking to a reflective listener, and 3) assimilated at a personal level the ITC group’s values and beliefs that are embodied in the mission statement and afterlife model.

Then, when conflicts develop among members, facilitators go through sessions of reflective listening with each member involved in the conflicts, referring to the group values and beliefs and the importance of inner work, and reminding members to revisit their private workspaces, as necessary.

If conflicts among the same members continue, the facilitators can reclassify them as provisionals as further encouragement to take advantage of their private workspaces.

Through that process, hopefully, problems are solved, resonance is sustained, and the contact field remains clear and vital… as each member decides whether he or she really wants to be a committed part of this ITC group and, if so, to do the necessary work.

Okay, so now let’s compare that to how conflicts are resolved in the big social groups that are spread around the world today.

Western Civilization
Western culture generally relies on four main processes for conflict resolution, listed here (I believe) from the most masculine and punitive to the most feminine and empathetic:

Litigation. Highly complex systems of laws, or rules, have evolved at various levels of society as a measuring stick for human behavior. Highly trained lawyers have studied these laws in order to represent two disputing parties in a formal, highly contentious courtroom environment in which one party will win and the other will lose, as decided by a judge or a jury (group of neutral citizens). Litigation is expensive, slow, emotionally draining, and unpredictable, and punishment can be harsh. The USA is among the most litigious societies today.

Arbitration. Disputing parties present their cases to an arbitrator or a panel of independent and qualified arbitrators in an adversarial environment. The arbitrator(s) determine the outcome of the case.

Mediation. A neutral mediator facilitates dialog, step by step, to help parties express their own interests and priorities in order to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement. In litigious societies, mediation is sometimes used (in Florida, for example) to resolve disputes peacefully so as not to have to go through the rigors of litigation.

Conciliation. A conciliator uses negotiation skills to navigate the parties toward an acceptable agreement. Conciliation is less adversarial than arbitration and less structured than mediation, aiming to identify a right that has been violated and to find the optimal solution. Italy is among the countries today whose legal systems are conciliatory by nature.

Religions
As lawyers and judges in litigious society accept their laws as the measure of human behavior, religious leaders accept the ancient wisdom of their religions as truth and try to resolve conflicts among their members with principles written in their holy books and teachings.

Christian leaders resort to the Bible when counselling their followers, especially the teachings of love, mercy, and forgiveness attributed to Jesus.(Read more… )

Muslim leaders keep the peace in Islamic communities by resorting to Sharia law (e.g. removing the arm of a thief or stoning an adulterer to death) and other, gentler teachings of justice attributed to Muhammad. (Read more here… and here… )

Jewish leaders resort to the Talmud, a compendium of teachings and interpretations by ancient Jewish scholars, often striving for “the golden mean,” or the point of acceptable compromise between conflicting parties. (Read more… )

Buddhists resort to Buddhist principles such as karma and inner exploration in the quest to resolve conflicts. (Read more… )

2 Responses to ITC Group Management: Keeping the Peace

Mark,
I just want to offer some perspectives of what I have been pondering since our paths crossed…..

You have done alot of thinking and writing and wonderful offering on the subject of ITC.
There are some of us people out here who deeply resonate with your experience, wisdom, and the importance of the knowledge base and the new template of what you are offering…something for anyone to embrace and build among ourselves…right now.
ITC is not a subject matter of common parlance, and I imagine that about 99.99% of the people on this earthly home will not be interested and/or they will not “get it”….at least not now, and perhaps not in the immediate future.
After all, the telephone was an inconceivable idea once upon a time. Now there is a huge array of ways to communicate instantly all over the globe.
What is impeding the communication bridges with the higher realms? Of course it is everything about our nature as noble savage beings that you have been teaching about over the past few decades of your life, and others have also decried through all of the ages. Human earth life is very challenging, and we all behave in very ping pong ways…we are not steady.

When I read your posts it all seems like common sense (because you have mastered the simplification of important aspects of spirit reality), and then I think that this is something that should be taught in schools and other kinds of learning and life growth institutions. Just as the telephone became reality, one day the universal teaching of our true nature will also become common. The senseless bickering over who and what Source is will dissipate. The vibrational rate of human consciousness will continue to increase to support this eventuality.
We currently act like we are a long way from embracing that reality. Spirit reality should be common sense to all of us, but it is not because we are to readily absorbed in the many meaningless ego distractions which earthly life offers. Spirit reality is who we are. Ancient traditions and aspects of the new-age movement of holism seem to be solidly oriented on who we are. This kind of harmonious unified field consciousness is what supports everything to begin with, and more and more people will become consciously conscious of this.
Regarding conflict and people wanting to get what they want when they want it…
Many people on earth think that war is normal. I think that a great many more people think that war is not normal. Will governments ever just decide to stop doing destruction of life and earth?
Yes, I think that this will happen as enlightenment becomes more pervasive.
It seems that 1 % of people are driving so many chaotic decisions and results. The other 99% just want to have a peaceful life with enough bounty and happiness and love to be able to feel and think that their lives really meant something good and that it was all a good journey and was worth it to come here from our spiritual home and manage living in our earthly home.
In the USA (western cultures and many consumerist eastern cultures) we teach, acculturate, habituate, and propagandize people to expect more and more and to have it faster and faster. Our culture is at a very extreme and dangerous point in its evolution. Imperialism and militarism are holding sway and ignorant people think we really need all of this bellicosity to protect us from the very forces of threat which we are creating.

The realms of Spirit are all upon and in betwixt us and through us…what you have called the “In-Beyond.”
The in-beyond is every multidimensional process of our lives that we cannot even begin to imagine with our consumerist brains. The only way to experience it to any conscious degree is to get the thinking mind still and out of its dissociative emotional and thought habituation.
We have so much of our energy tied up in our emotions and thoughts about our lives in this seemingly increasingly chaotic world that we have no time or energy to devote to the journey of Spirit in these fabulous human bodies.

In summary…I am writing these words as a sort of offering from a parallel thinker and human spirit to just iterate the importance of your efforts in the continuation of establishing the template of the ITC process. It is so important.
So much suffering would cease if we had access to the direct knowledge of who we really are and why we are here. And furthermore, just imagine the wonder of communicating with beings in higher realms of Light.
The darker and slower vibrating forces which seem to assiduously assert their negativity are unable to carry on when the forces of Light emerge and beam and permeate.
So…you are such a carrier of this Light, as are most who read your writings. There are many millions more who don’t read your writings who would resonate with ITC whether they know it or not.
There is always the impediment of the doubting minds…those who need “proof” that higher realms exist. Of course, if these people were in touch with their own inner world they would have all the proof they need.
There are millions who would gladly eschew mammon in any form to be able to assist in the spread of spritual Abundance.
Thanks for reading.
Onward…

That’s about the most moving comment I’ve read to date. Thanks and God bless you.

I’ve come to a point where I’ve gotten kind of fed up with life on Earth as driven by the savage side of our nature. All I want to do in my remaining years is to enjoy the company of friends and family, and to keep writing all I can to put the reality you describe above in a clear framework that anyone can understand. Then anyone who can glean useful information from it can use it freely to try to make the world a better place. Meanwhile, my main job is just to get it all out there, in writing, in as much depth and clarity as I can… before moving on to a better life in better worlds.

If the Ethereals smile on our world in my lifetime (in the next 10 or 20 years) and ITC bridges start to open up, I’ll gladly devote most of my effort to that project. If not, my prayer is that humanity will somehow, someday become worthy of and ready for ITC, and as the world begins to heal from its noble-savage brow-beatings of recent decades, light-driven interactions with the spirit worlds begin to flood humanity with knowledge and wisdom of the ages.

Meanwhile, I look forward to our next chat over a cup (or two or… ) of coffee.

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I try to share on this site only my original information and research material from the world ITC community, supplemented with materials such as pictures and quotes that are available freely on the Internet. If anyone viewing the site finds materials here that should not be shared freely, please contact me so that I can remove them.
Thanks!
MM
itcmark@gmail.com